NASA lunar rocks land at Staten Island's Greenbelt Nature Center

View full sizeThe Greenbelt Nature Center will be exhibiting a sample of lunar rocks and offering two lectures about them on Monday. (Staten Island Advance / JAN SOMMA-HAMMEL)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Treasures from space on display at the Greenbelt Nature Center offer an out-of-this world testament to America’s spirit of exploration — and could be key to the survival of humanity.

Moon rocks gathered during the Apollo missions undertaken during NASA’s heyday in the late 1960s and early 1970s are on view alongside examples from mineral-rich meteorites that crashed to the Earth in recent decades — as part of an exhibit intended to give Staten Islanders some mind-blowing perspective about our place in the universe.

“It’s nice to bring people in from the cold to see these rocks — it’s not every day you get to see a meteorite or a lunar rock,” said Jessica R. Kratz, the coordinator of the Nature Center, who attended a NASA workshop to learn about the rocks and to be eligible for the display of loaned samples. “This is to introduce people to the great wonders of the outdoors, here and beyond.”

She said visitors to the center, at 700 Rockland Ave. in Sea View, will have the chance to hold in their palms the precious samples — encased in two Lucite disks, roughly the size of hockey pucks — every Saturday and Sunday from now through Jan. 30, from 1 to 4 p.m.

‘IRREPLACEABLE’

“These are irreplaceable national treasurers because we’re not going back to the moon any time soon,” said Ms. Kratz in respect of lunar rocks made up of exotic-sounding Orange Soil, Highlands Soil, Mare Soil, Breccia and Anorthosite. “This is space exploration for a new generation because today’s kids haven’t experienced the excitement in the same way as another generation had during Apollo.”

But the most exciting chapter of space exploration, could be in the future, said Professor Irving Robbins, director of the astrophysical observatory at the College of Staten Island, who will give a multimedia presentation Monday for all ages that he has dubbed “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Asteroids and Comets.”

The chips of meteorites on display the Center, some of which came from chunks of spacerock that fell to earth in Mexico in 1969, contain minerals increasingly difficult or impossible to find on Earth.

“There is a tremendous amount of wealth out in the Astrobelt,” said Robbins, describing a place in space between Mars and Jupiter with millions of asteroids — “chunky little bodies,” some of which are 1,000 miles across. “I’m going to be speaking about one value, awareness: There is a bigger universe than just Staten Island.”

Energy-starved earthlings should look to comets for hydrocarbons, ammonia and methane for fuel, and the organic compounds integral to fertilizer and synthetic gasoline, Robbins said.

“So when the price of gas is $50 a gallon, there are resources waiting for us out there,” said Robbins. “If we don’t exploit them, we’re going back to the stone age. The future of humanity is in space.”

After Robbins speaks from 1 to 2 p.m. on Monday, his faculty colleague Professor Alan I. Benimoff, who did his Ph.D. thesis on lunar rocks, will present “The Nature and Origin of the Moon” from 2 to 3 p.m.